This is the second part of our series on understanding Web3 marketing. Marketing is a process that evolves along a series of objectives, from awareness to consideration, to trials and then loyalty. Different tools are effective for each one of these steps. Like a spider web, marketing is spread across several focus areas with different layers. It helps to break it into bits; product marketing, corporate marketing, and customer marketing.

Product marketing addresses the question about what the product is and what it does—explaining and communicating the features and highlighting how it differs from others. Corporate marketing is about positioning the company and communicating its messages using various platforms and tools. This is what is commonly called "Branding". Customer marketing focuses on reaching the target market to make sales or onboard users.

For example, brand positioning is all about the battle of the mind. If you are not occupying a position in the minds of users or the target market, your brand value is zero. It doesn't matter if you're first to market; if you can't articulate your value proposition and brand messaging effectively, you’ve failed in message-market fit. You will only end up as an afterthought. Also, strategy and timing are essential too. Sometimes marketing can be way ahead of delivery, and sometimes it can be way behind it, but when the timing and sequence are correct, the magic of results happens.

At the core of marketing in Web3 is community. How do you build a robust community around a product/project? How do you get people excited about what you're working on? What tools do you leverage in your marketing journey?

By asking these questions, you can choose the best marketing strategy to achieve your objectives. In web3 marketing, there are content-centric, product-centric, community-centric and event-centric approaches. All of these are targeted at achieving different marketing objectives or goals.

Content-led growth (CLG)

"Content is the present and future of marketing."

Content-centred marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content with a high degree of consistency. The aim here is to attract and retain a clearly defined target audience. A content-led growth strategy involves using blog posts and content assets (educational, informational, inspirational) to drive leads to business websites, create brand awareness, and allow sustainable business growth. In web3, marketing is significantly less effective without great content. Beyond knowing what your product does for them, users want more. They want to feel engaged, they want to learn, and they want to feel like they are part of a community. This is what makes CLG a robust growth strategy. Rather than constantly pitching or shipping new products or features, you are providing your users with relevant and valuable content, seeking their input and educating them on solutions that put them ahead of the curve.

Content drives everything when it comes to both B2B, B2C and D2C marketing in web3. Marketers and CMOs in web3 simply cannot afford to compromise on content quality. As an emerging space with relatively scarce documentation, content-centric marketing is a no-brainer in web3. Marketers should make content marketing a focal point by investing in robust and valuable educational content. Over time, content marketing has progressed through categorically three different eras.

• The pre-content marketing era — here, the business with the best product wins.

• The content marketing era — here, content begins to garner recognition. In addition to having a great product, the business with the most helpful content wins.

• The media era — in addition to having a great product and offering helpful content to users, the business that manages the most engagement wins.

So how do you leverage media content marketing in web3?

Blogging/inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is essential in creating brand awareness and generating new leads. It involves strategically creating valuable content that aligns with the needs of your target users and helps build a robust long-term customer relationship. But for inbound marketing to be effective, you must define your target audience and understand what content and topics appeal to them. They leverage the necessary platforms to promote essential topics relevant to your niche. Ideally, inbound marketing has two main components—Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Thought-leadership.

SEO should be the backbone of your content creation strategy. What is the point of creating valuable content if it doesn't reach your target audience? Make your content calendar SEO-centric to target relevant keywords and increase visibility. Thought leadership is also an essential component here because it helps build credibility. By establishing yourself as a notable voice within your industry, people will listen to you more and value your insights. It is also a great way to educate your target users on business value propositions.

Social marketing

Having a robust social presence is extremely important for content distribution. This is social marketing. A business should have a visible social presence across multiple social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Different social media platforms allow you to reach different types of users. Also, these platforms allow for repurposing and redistributing old content. Leverage social media channels to educate target users. Be flexible and creative. Think dynamic sideshow posts, carousels, live demo sessions, memes etc.

Video marketing

Marketing is all about grabbing your audience's attention long enough to convince them you have the solution they need. Video marketing is arguably the most powerful way to grab attention because users don't need much effort to click and watch videos. Short videos are key here because it means potential users can access the information they contain faster and easier than other forms of content. When done right, a great video can help maximise user engagement by increasing the time users spend interacting with your product. And the more time they spend interacting with your solution, the more likely they will convert. Strategically embedding videos into existing content turbocharges engagement and accomplish more goals with fewer marketing budgets. This means you get more value from existing budgets, freeing up resources for other marketing initiatives.

Email marketing

Email marketing allows you to stay in touch with your users regularly. It is an important tool for retaining and enhancing customer loyalty. Product users also appreciate being kept up-to-date with the latest products and promos. When done right, a newsletter is cost-effective, fast and a simple way of keeping users informed on new product launches, updated features and new promotions. Moreso, emails are more likely to be seen relative to social media updates, where users can easily miss out on important updates or announcements. A routine newsletter, limited offer updates, welcome messages, and anniversary or birthday messages are powerful ways to keep your users engaged and loyal.

Successful businesses and brands are well-versed in content-led growth marketing and have continued to leverage various tools and techniques to stay ahead of the curve.

Product-led growth (PLG)

"Is the product the new marketing?"

Here is the hard truth about marketing—users don't trust marketers. As a marketer, you can create the best copies, obsess over visuals and pour your heart into your content to generate leads and grow your funnels. But the truth remains that no matter how much effort goes into marshalling and refining the best marketing strategy, there's nothing more impactful than the voice of your existing users. This is because potential users care less about what you have to say about yourself and more about what your users have to say about you. And nothing shapes a user's perspective on a brand more than the product itself.

Web3 is a very competitive space, with numerous projects launching every single month. Many of these projects are more or fewer carbon copies of each other regarding services provided. The high level of direct competition in web3 makes it extremely difficult to stand out, especially when you factor in today's consumers' significantly low attention span. You have a space where so many people offer similar services, using the same marketing tools and techniques to capture users' little attention. This is where the product makes the difference.

Product-led growth marketing involves using the product as the primary driver of user acquisition. This matters now more than ever because customers are demanding. Their attention spans are low. They would instead use your product than read a whitepaper about the problem it solves. But at the same time, they don't want to waste their time, which is why the need for proof of concept is essential. So PLG aims to build great products that appeal to users so much that they are spreading the word. In an increasingly competitive industry like web3, PLG marketing lowers your customer acquisition costs and increases profit margins. The concept of PLG is centred around making an incredible product and investing in ways to sell itself. From a marketing perspective, you’re asking, “How can our product generate demand?” and not, “How can we generate demand for our product?”.

Great products sell themselves

Users today are less patient and more sceptical, and it has never been more challenging to build trust as a marketer. With so many projects sloshing around in the web3 space and the high propensity for scams and rug pulls, acquiring and onboarding real loyal users becomes even more challenging. You often get degens and grifters who are only there for the rewards and incentives and bail once the juice stops running. The best way to avoid these marketing traps is to turn your product into a marketing tool and invest in building a great user experience. No amount of time, energy, and resources poured into your marketing efforts can override the negative impact of a wrong product or poorly executed customer service. Get the best out of your users and turn them into marketers for your product by providing personalised and predictive customer experiences. This is crucial in achieving sustainable business growth in a user-centric industry like web3.

Rethink your approach towards customer experience

The best marketing is only a starting point for building user loyalty and trust. This is particularly true in web3, where users are the bedrock of any successful project. Analyst reports and flamboyant rhetoric about your tech stack or the number of high-profile VCs backing your project don't necessarily convince people to use your product. Users crave top-notch product experiences. The experience you give your users keeps them coming back and makes them tell others about your product. Inbound marketers have perfected the art of telling stories, demonstrating value and building lasting trust. But if those stories don't feature your users' voices and experiences, the effect will be less impactful. Your users should be at the heart of your marketing strategy. The stories and narratives that your marketing team are pushing should start with the users who already trust your product. The best marketing is the actual experience users have with the product and the references they make. Nothing beats word of mouth, and PLG is the perfect strategy to achieve this outcome.

Community-led growth (CoLG)

"Build, test, iterate and scale"

While the community is not peculiar to Web3, it is undoubtedly the foundation on which the principle of web3 is built. From NFT projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club to DeFi protocols and decentralised marketplaces like MakerDAO or Uniswap, strong communities have played a foundational role in some of the most successful projects in web3 today. Communities create real value for members. They drive real connections and allow individuals to be part of a shared idea. Communities in web3 provide a framework for members to contribute to what is being built and benefit from its success. In turn, members of the community act as a marketing flywheel, accelerating the community's growth.

This is the principle behind the community-led growth marketing strategy. The logic behind this is simple: By making users feel that they are part of a community, they will be willing to refer their friends and family and are less tempted to leave for a competitor. Community users often become brand evangelists, which is unrestricted, effective marketing for the business. During the early stages of project development, community members often act as focus groups, giving valuable feedback that companies can use to improve their products and iterate more quickly.

Communities have long been a part of many business successes, even in traditional markets. Businesses have long benefited from communities of dedicated customers. But marketers have not been making these communities central to business growth. They are often just a welcome side effect of a product-led strategy. In web3, however, making the community a focal point in your market development strategies is critical. Also, product-led growth and community-led growth strategies are not mutually exclusive. They rely on each other and are synergistic in maximising relevant results. Community-led growth feeds into human social nature and fosters people's need for connection, providing a sense of belonging that brings value and conversion.

Minimum Viable Community (MVC)

Community-centric growth strategy is no doubt extremely valuable in web3 marketing. But community building is easier said than done. Few manage to do it right. To build a robust organic community with real value, you must start small and do things that don't scale. This is where the minimum viable community (MVC) comes into play. Derived from the minimum viable product (MVP) concept, MVC is the minor action you can take to unite people. An MVC is not a community yet; it rather allows for a way to test and experiment on the foundations of the community you intend to build. The essence is to avoid wasting resources launching and trying to grow a community that won't work.

The idea is to do things that don't scale to determine what brings value. Building relationships and trust in a manageable and not too overwhelming way to help you build structures that will ultimately attract the right individuals to your community. MVC allows you to create dots you will need to connect to the community later. Don't build too much until you know you are on the right track. Start small. You build, you test, you iterate, and you scale. Starting small is arguably the only authentic way of doing this. And authenticity matters if you want to attract genuine community members. Starting small allows you to build trust and create the right culture for the community. A community without trust will likely not survive. MVC is a practical approach towards hedging risk. It provides the best framework for building the right community for a project. Examples of MVCs include starting a simple newsletter, using audio spaces such as Discord stages or Twitter spaces, podcasting, creating hashtags and leveraging memes. Simple things that help you find the right people.

Event-led growth (ELG)

"Anything can be an event"

Event-led growth strategy plugs directly into community-led growth because, with ELG, you are not trying to build a community but instead going places where existing communities exist and trying to amplify connections and engagements.

Event-led growth involves leveraging immersive and integrated events to discover, engage and grow a business user base. It is an event-first growth strategy across the user journey, with events at the centre of everything. ELG is about making events the focal point of your marketing strategy. Since web3 is fundamentally rooted in communities, ELG can be an effective marketing tool because it allows marketers to optimise and amplify communities and sub-communities associated with a brand's offering. When done right, ELG can be an effective tool to enhance revenue streams and fortify user loyalty.

Minimum Viable Community (MVC)

Community-centric growth strategy is no doubt extremely valuable in web3 marketing. But community building is easier said than done. Few manage to do it right. To build a robust organic community with real value, you must start small and do things that don't scale. This is where the minimum viable community (MVC) comes into play. Derived from the minimum viable product (MVP) concept, MVC is the minor action you can take to unite people. An MVC is not a community yet; it rather allows for a way to test and experiment on the foundations of the community you intend to build. The essence is to avoid wasting resources launching and trying to grow a community that won't work.

The idea is to do things that don't scale to determine what brings value. Building relationships and trust in a manageable and not too overwhelming way to help you build structures that will ultimately attract the right individuals to your community. MVC allows you to create dots you will need to connect to the community later. Don't build too much until you know you are on the right track. Start small. You build, you test, you iterate, and you scale. Starting small is arguably the only authentic way of doing this. And authenticity matters if you want to attract genuine community members. Starting small allows you to build trust and create the right culture for the community. A community without trust will likely not survive. MVC is a practical approach towards hedging risk. It provides the best framework for building the right community for a project. Examples of MVCs include starting a simple newsletter, using audio spaces such as Discord stages or Twitter spaces, podcasting, creating hashtags and leveraging memes. Simple things that help you find the right people.

Event-led growth (ELG)

"Anything can be an event"

Event-led growth strategy plugs directly into community-led growth because, with ELG, you are not trying to build a community but instead going places where existing communities exist and trying to amplify connections and engagements.

Event-led growth involves leveraging immersive and integrated events to discover, engage and grow a business user base. It is an event-first growth strategy across the user journey, with events at the centre of everything. ELG is about making events the focal point of your marketing strategy. Since web3 is fundamentally rooted in communities, ELG can be an effective marketing tool because it allows marketers to optimise and amplify communities and sub-communities associated with a brand's offering. When done right, ELG can be an effective tool to enhance revenue streams and fortify user loyalty.

Looking to build your web3 marketing strategy and grow your market share through innovative marketing? Reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter